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Learning Innovation Center

Welcome to LINC, Oregon State University's Learning Innovation Center. LINC and its landscape quad define a new precinct on OSU's historic Olmsted campus.

Opened in Fall 2015, OSU's newest classroom building is a four-story, technology-rich learning environment, hosting over 2,300 general purpose classroom seats in 14 unique state-of-the-art classrooms including arena- and parliament-style classrooms, a variety collaborative learning environments, and 640 seats of informal learning space distributed around the building.

The architects were challenged to produce big lecture halls that could create learning outcomes like smaller and more intimate classrooms. To pull this off, they had to work closely with the instructors to imagine an experience that hadn't been seen before. This inquisitive process enabled the architects to design for the ways in which learning takes place. The key is to create the most engaging interaction possible between the instructors and the students. Proximity is crucial, yet in most large lecture halls students sit far away from the instructor. The architects also learned that providing informal study and break-out spaces is critical.

By flipping the traditional academic building design and wrapping generous hallways with informal study areas around the perimeter, the congestion of student flow between classes was eased while creating comfortable pockets and nodes that encourage learning to continue outside the classroom.

Both the 600-seat and 300-seat arena classrooms utilize "teaching in the round" to bring students as close to the instructors as possible. Configured to adapt to emerging technology, and ringed with continuous screens, every seat in the classroom is a good seat. The 185-seat Parliament classroom is configured for debate and conversation, an idea we took from the British Parliament. The Learning Studios are designed for students working in groups to accommodate different pedagogies.

Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce

| April 29, 2016
From the outside, this fourstory, $65 million brick building looks like most campus buildings, but according to Michael Tingley of Boora Architects, "This is the most unique and sophisticated lecture hall in any university in the world."

Oregon Stater

Kevin Miller | Winter 2015
Back behind the Women’s Building and north of shiny new Austin Hall, a showcase of Oregon State’s commitment to help lead the way to more effective teaching is taking shape.

Construction Time Lapse

Constructive Interference by Hypersonic

Constructive Interference is a sculpture designed to engage members of the OSU community in active learning, by presenting a mystery to their senses: a static object that appears, impossibly, to be moving.

The sculpture is a metaphor for how we exchange knowledge, how synthesis of apparently different ﬁelds widens our perspective, and how investigation deepens our understanding of the reality in which we live. The composition of the moire pattern derives from the principles of electrostatics, where two electric poles form field lines in an exchange of electrical information.

Constructive Interference is composed of two large patterned sheets of steel, designed to create a rapidly changing visual interference effect as viewers pass by. Secondary moving shapes and hidden structures appear fleetingly within the sculpture as the eye and body pass by. The effect and shape of the piece changes dramatically from one vantage point to another around the space, while the sculpture itself remains static.

The sculpture and its dynamic pattern were developed in Processing, Rhino-Grasshopper, and Python. The rear surface was painted directly on to the wall, using several CNC-vinyl cut masks to create the painted rust pattern. The front surface was fabricated from 20 laser cut pieces of Corten steel, welded together on site and finished to form a single 30 foot wide, 17 foot tall steel sheet. This surface was hand-treated to a rich weathered patina, curving from flush with the wall to a dramatic overhang.